For all the breakneck thrills and fingernail-gnawing tension of last week's bravura heist sequence, there are scenes in this comparatively quiet and reflective hour that feel far more momentous, scenes in some cases that viewers have been waiting to see for years. Jesse quitting the business once and for all has felt like an unacknowledged possibility for so long that to have it finally happen, albeit temporarily, was a jaw dropper.

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Meanwhile Grey Matter finally comes back into play, and its expanded backstory fills in one or two of the missing links in Walt's personality; his petty greed and seemingly insatiable lust for power make more sense, now that we know he's on some level trying to revive the fortune he feels he screwed himself out of. And - in one of the episode's many moments of twisted comedy - Jesse comes over for dinner at the White house, and it is every bit as torturously awkward as that scenario suggests.

But first of all comes the fallout from last week's sobering climax, in what might be the most chillingly effective cold open the show has ever done. With minimal score and even more minimal dialogue, Walt, Mike and Todd dismantle the unfortunate kid's dirt bike and prepare to melt both it, and him, down into acid. This concept is both horrifying enough and (by now) familiar enough that we didn't need to see more than the hand and the empty, waiting container; director Colin Bucksey wisely chose to focus instead on the more poignant, symbolic dismembering of the bike. And as morally hollowed out as Walt has become, he summoned up the humanity to look slightly sick throughout the sequence.

Todd made his own case about as well as he could under the circumstances, although did he really think that "S**t happens" was going to get him anything other than a beat-down from Jesse? After weeks on end of Jesse playing mediator between Walt and Mike, the script gets flipped and it's Walt who has to try and reconcile the differences between Jesse and Todd. And while Todd couldn't possibly have known this, he chose just about the best words he could have when he defended his actions.

"At the end of the day it was him or us, and I chose us," he reasons, which is almost verbatim the words Walt used when he was trying to persuade Jesse that killing Gale was their only option back in the finale of season three. "When it comes down to you and me versus him," Walt said then, "I'm truly sorry, but it's gonna be him." Notably, that scene was also the last time Jesse tried to quit the business - he offered to go on the run and let Walt cut a deal with the DEA, but Walt refused and came up with the Gale plan instead. Getting out has always been on the cards for Jesse, just as it's always been out of the question for Walt.

It feels more and more as though Jesse is determinedly choosing to ignore the truth about Walt, even when it's staring him straight in the face or, in this instance, echoing in his ears. He looks truly disturbed as he listens to Walt whistling merrily to himself mere moments after claiming the kid's death has been keeping him up at night, and that beat was held for so long that it felt jarring to have nothing come of it.

Jesse's MO for this season has been reinvestment in his mentor, and it seems as though nothing is going to deter him from believing in Walt, no matter how compelling; the whistling moment played out exactly like the end of 'Hazard Pay', where Jesse looked troubled by Walt's behaviour but never made mention of it again. It'll take something momentous, something on the scale of asphyxiated girlfriends or poisoned children, to shake Jesse's conviction at this point.

Nevertheless, the scene in which Jesse's watching the news report was so telling. Once again, it's somebody feeling an appropriate sense of moral conflict, and Walt bludgeoning them with his blasé justifications. "There'll be plenty of time for soul searching later," he tells Jesse, as if overpowering guilt were something you could rationally choose to put off until a more convenient time - although of course, that is exactly what Walt has repeatedly shown himself capable of doing.

The line between the domestic space and the business space has already become blurred this season, now that Skyler knows so much about Walt's trade, and as noted in our 'Hazard Pay' recap, Walt and Jesse's new method of cooking inside temporarily abandoned family homes sums this up beautifully. Walt used to be furious whenever Jesse showed up at the White house, where now he's actively inviting him over and all but forcing him to stay for dinner.

At first this seemed like just another way for him to mess with Skyler, but as the dinner - the hilariously, horrendously, tongue-chewingly awkward dinner - continued, it became clear that this was more for Jesse's benefit than Skyler's. Just like telling Marie about the affair, this was Walt playing for sympathy, saying, "Look what a heinous bitch my wife is, she literally said she's waiting for me to die of cancer, this is what I have to deal with at home". Skyler played her part just as Walt knew she would, and Jesse responded just as Walt knew he would.

That's not to say Walt was putting it on; he really is wounded by Skyler's rejection and he really does want Jesse's sympathy. Ditto the Grey Matter story, which was probably the closest Walt's come to being honest about anything with anybody this season, and puts a more clearly motivated spin on his increasing megalomania; this is a very, very bitter man who's been waiting for the opportunity to redress the balance ever since he took that $5k buyout. But as Jesse gently points out, $5k is not the same as $5 million, and a meth empire is not necessarily something to be proud of.

It's also something that Walt would have trouble rubbing in Gretchen and Elliot's faces, and it's easy to imagine a scenario where this problem is what ultimately undoes him. He's "suffered and bled" for this business (not to mention burned the crap out of his wrist with electrical fire), he's finally reclaimed his lost glory, but to everybody in his old life he's still mild-mannered, downtrodden sellout Walter White. He couldn't bear to let Hank think Gale was Heisenberg last season, and on some primal level he's never going to be satisfied until the world knows exactly who he is.

Skyler breaking down in front of Marie, and Marie being told something without actually being told anything, felt a shade repetitious, although it's interesting how the Ted plotline has become nothing more than a red herring to be tossed around the White-Schrader households in lieu of actual revelations. The writers are in something of a corner here because of course, they can't have Skyler tell Marie about Walt's meth cooking at this stage - or at any stage, since it's hard to imagine a more anticlimactic means of Hank finding out - but it's becoming difficult to write scenes between the sisters that don't feel like filler at this point.

But that's a small point of contention in what's otherwise a densely packed episode full of meaty character beats and smooth forward momentum. Walt's plan where "everybody wins" presumably doesn't include a victory for new potential villain Declan (Louis Ferreira). Declan wants "Fring's blue" (and wouldn't that name just infuriate Walt if he'd heard it?) off the streets and Walt's plan, whatever it turns out to be, probably won't include that as an outcome. In which case, have we met our new Big Bad for the final run of episodes, or will Walt's ego be taking on that role single-handed?

Final thoughts:
- Jesse doggedly making small talk about green beans amidst the toxic fumes of the White marriage was simultaneously so endearing and so painful. Line of the week goes to his traumatised "Thank God", after Skyler waltzes out of the awkward dinner and Walt says that his kids are gone. Hee.
- Presumably Skyler knows that Jesse is Walt's partner in the meth trade; the last time she mentioned "that Pinkman kid" it was in season three's premiere when she accused him of dealing marijuana, but she's presumably put two and two together and figured out that Jesse's into the harder stuff too.
- The revelation that Todd kept the tarantula in a jar was pretty unsettling. It's difficult to read whether he's just a slightly simple-minded kid who took Walt and Jesse's warning too literally, or a stone-cold psycho who's accustomed to killing and likes to collect trinkets from his victims, as this brief scene indicates. Either way: shudder.
- There was a nice little beat in the first office scene where Todd called Walt "Mr White", and Jesse looked irritated. In fairness, Jesse spent most of that scene looking distinctly unhappy, but that particular reaction shot seemed deliberate.
- On a similar note, Walt and Jesse are wearing exactly the same outfit in this initial negotiation scene, in contrast to Mike and Todd. It's a tiny visual hint towards the inevitability of these two becoming a united front again by the end of the episode - Walt has now become a pro at emotionally manipulating Jesse back onto his side.
- Do we think that Mike's written 'F**k you' counts as the requisite single F word allowance per season?
- "I would never come to the headquarters of our illegal meth operation dragging a bunch of cops, Walter", Mike says drily, leaving the "Like you did that one time, you tool" part unsaid.